Stories from My Professional Work: Opening the Door to My Work with Incarcerated Youth
I was given a budget and a mission.
The unit I worked on housed girls, ages twelve to eighteen, in a residential drug treatment program. When my supervisor told me I could create a parenting program using the Baby Think It Over model, now called RealCare Baby, I wanted it to feel as real as possible. Not just a classroom exercise or worksheets to complete. Something as close to a real baby as you can get.
So we built it that way.
For a week before getting their baby, each girl wore a pregnancy belly. They had daily lessons on child development, caregiving, and what parenting actually looked like day to day. They learned how to install a car seat. Staff inspected every single one. When the baby arrived, the girl had to schedule an appointment with the nurse and go through a sample visit, just like any new parent would.
The baby stayed with her on the unit. She had her own room off to the side, larger than the regular bedrooms and with its own toilet. Private enough to feel real. She had to take her baby everywhere. If she wanted a babysitter, she spent the points she had earned through chores and good behavior. Those same points usually bought candy or soda. Now they bought an hour of sleep.
Most of the girls started the week saying things like “look at these cute baby clothes.”
By the end, most of them didn’t want to see another baby for a long time.
The night staff would brief us each morning on how the girl had handled the night. I remember walking onto the unit and seeing the tiredness on their faces. Heavy eyes. Slower movements. Some of them said flat out they didn’t want to keep it anymore. One night with a crying baby that wouldn’t stop had done what no classroom lesson could.
It was working.
But the program did something else too. When the stress rose, so did their protective parts.
Some girls had angry parts that erupted. They yelled at the baby in the middle of the night and begged staff to turn it off. Others had parts that wanted to bolt or float away entirely. They walked away, left the baby unattended, checked out. And some had parts that froze or vanished, going quiet when the weight of it became too much. These weren’t failures. They were windows. The stress of the program was hitting close to something real, and their protective parts were doing exactly what protective parts do.
If any of these parts sound familiar, you may recognize them from The Hallway of Doorknobs: A Journey to the Feelings Inside. Blazer, Bolt, Balloon, Freeze, and Vanish all live in those pages. The book is a good place to start exploring what these parts look like and what they’re protecting.
In Internal Family Systems, these are the parts worth paying attention to. Not because they’re problems, but because they show us what a person is carrying and how they’ve learned to cope when things get hard.
Our unit psychologist worked closely with the girls throughout the week because the program often stirred up deep emotions. Those emotions also gave us somewhere to go. In groups, the girls started talking honestly about what was coming up for them. They learned new ways to cope: breathing techniques and progressive muscle relaxation. They also began using movement to release stress through an exercise program. They discovered their parts had more options than the ones they’d always relied on.
One girl said something I have never forgotten.
She looked at me and said, “I thought I could have a baby easily but now I know I can’t.”
I was happy when she said that. Not because the program had been hard on her, but because she had recognized something true about herself. Something that might change the choices she made going forward.
If this program prevented one girl from having a pregnancy she wasn’t ready for, it did its job.
She said she thought she could do it easily. Now she knew she couldn’t. That kind of knowing is hard to teach. But sometimes a crying baby at 3am does the work for you.
Reflection Questions
- Think of a time when stress or exhaustion brought out parts of you that surprised you. What were those parts trying to do?
- Have you ever had an experience that changed how you saw yourself or what you were ready for?
- What would it mean to help a young person in your life name their protective parts before a crisis hits?
This post is part of my series, Stories from My Professional Work, exploring protector parts through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS). IFS was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, whose work continues to shape how I teach, write, and understand the protective parts we all carry.
- Baby Think It Over - June 22, 2026
- The Kid Who Kept Everyone Laughing - June 15, 2026
- The Kid Behind the Fire - June 8, 2026
I had a time when one of my dogs had a strong reaction to thunder and fireworks. She couldn’t sleep through the night. She would try to dig and sometimes injure herself in the process, so I had to stay up to comfort her and keep her safe.
I would sit with her while the lightning and thunder scared her, and I’d stay awake as long as I could. Eventually, I’d fall asleep on the floor outside the bathroom, where she liked to go when she was scared. It helped a little, but I definitely didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Over the years, I tried many different solutions, but nothing worked completely.
I ended up dreading fireworks and thunderstorms. My priority was to protect my dog and keep her safe, but sometimes it brought up anger toward people setting off loud fireworks. It also brought out an exhausted, irritated, frustrated part of me that just wanted to sleep. I even felt frustrated with my dog at times because she couldn’t be consoled.
Eventually, she lost her hearing. It was hard to see that happen, but it completely ended the problem.
I can imagine the girls in the baby program may have felt some of these same things during their time caring for the baby. There can be love, responsibility, exhaustion, irritation, protectiveness, and guilt all mixed together.
I can remember feeling some of those things that those girls were feeling even when I was a 30 year-old mother and thought I was completely ready. Parts came out that were completely unexpected. Being a parent has provided the opportunity to learn about my parts and I don’t think that will ever end.